Sabriel by Garth Nix

books arn’t generally reviewed by professional book reviewers out of ten or with five stars, so there no chance at cheating

This means i, and so you, are restricted to books i have read and although i have read many, i remeber few so will have to fill in time when i read the books with other reviews, but there you go. Now you know my hardship….. anyway:

Sabriel. I want to do this book some actuall justice in this review. I want to be able to put across to you just how involving and memerable this book is. It was the first book i read i seriously couldn’t put down. I thought that was Artemis Fowl, but i actually missed reading this book once i had finished it so much less than a week later i started it again. Its just that good.

The Plot- The plot concerns death. This book is about a young girls jurney to becomeing a woman….. by fighting necromancers and there armies of the dead in a magical land. Basically, in this book Necromancers are the enemys of the world and must be stopped at all cost. There is one good Necromancer who works with the charter, which is a magic made of runes from an endless energy instead of bad free magic that is unbound and dangerous. This good Necromancer is called the Aborshen and Sabriel is his daughter. Trapped in death the Aborshen calls upon his untrained daughter to help him. Next thing shes heading for his house in the magical Old Kingdom across the wall from the “normall” land she had been living in. On her adventure she meets a talking cat, fights undead with magical bells and a magical sword, unbinds and falls for a Prince masqurading as a fool and explores the provinces of Death itself……

The entertainment factor– I found this book very funny in many places. Moggot the talking cat was my favorit charature for his cutting and condesending wit, yet lazyness and contempt for everything except his lack of fish. The story is also very easy to get into, and despite what immpression i may have gave already, very belivable. I found i could relate in some ways to Sabriels story, though mostly on an emotional level as i dont know any Necromancers myself, or princes, or talking cats for that matter. The sheer volume of imagination needed for this book should have made my head hurt, but Garths’ descriptions of everything were so detailed and clear, they made it as easy as following a lego diagram. I never once felt lost in Sabriels emotional jurney as Garth explained all her feelings in a way understandable by boys ad girls, and most importantly, when you have this many things going on in a book, he never over-complicated it or tried to have too many things going on at once, which kept the story easy to follow and actually kept me in suspence right till the end!

The language, structure and style– These are probably words your familiar with from English S.A.’s past, but they do apply to a book review. The language of the book is very descriptive and detailed and clear throughout. Garth likes the use of simarlies and metephores to get the mental image across. The structure of the book includes a prologe and is well divided into understandable gaps between each new chapture, because theres nothing i hate more in a book than starting a new chapture just for the sake of starting a new chapture. Finally the style of the book is quite intense, pulling you in to the story. The amount of thinking i did about what will happen next was really all that was on my mind when the book wasn’t in my hands.

Genere– Well, if you havn’t guessed by now, its a teen fictional adventure, which is a cross between three generes and i think Garth pulls it off very well.

Long review short, i love this book, and would like to award it a 8/10. Why? Because for me 10 says its perfect and although i did start reading it a second time, i didnt finish it. So why not 9? Because i did recently start reading it again for this review but coudn’t even get past Chapture 2, so it has to be an 8. Still, i highly recomend buying this book, especially if your into Death, Necromancers, teen romance, adventure or a witty talking cat!